FIRST, A POINT OF CLARIFICATION. Technically speaking, cellphones aren’t really phones. They’re radios. If you already knew this—or might have figured it out if only you’d taken a short break from fiddling with your BlackBerry to think about it—good for you. You’re now free to skip the next paragraph and respond to your latest text.

For cellular novices, here’s a little tutorial: At any given moment, the sky above Toronto is full of radio waves ricocheting from tower to tower on their way to waiting hand-held devices. The city, or any area with cellular service, is divided up into a grid, consisting of cells (hence the name), within range of a single tower. Every radio wave transmitted between towers has a distinct frequency, measured in megahertz and gigahertz, and all the various frequencies make up our wireless spectrum. The federal govern­ment plays transmission traffic cop and decides which phone carrier gets which frequencies. To do this, the government carves up the spectrum into geographic pieces and auctions off leases. Generally speaking, the more frequencies a telco has available for its towers, the more phones each tower can support, and the larger and faster their network will be.

Until last year, more than 95 per cent of the Canadian cellular universe was controlled by three mega-companies: Rogers, Bell and Telus. Dividing a country of 33 million three ways was a boon for the giants, but a cause for much griping across the nation. The feds saw an opportunity: by leasing an additional 105 MHz of aerial real estate, they could open the industry to more companies (thus increasing competition) and the government would pocket an estimated $1.5 billion for its troubles. They launched their spectrum auction last May, reserving 40 MHz of frequency for newcomers. A field of 26 bidders emerged. Quebecor, the Montreal-based media company, and Eastlink, a Halifax telecommunications and cable provider, were expected to snap up enough contracts to start regional networks in the east. Data and Audio-Visual Enterprises (or DAVE, run by satellite radio mogul John Bitove) and Shaw Communications (Canada’s second largest cable company) rounded out the list of bigger players. The rest were well-financed entrepreneurs or small regional companies.

Globalive, a 10-year-old Toronto telecommunications outfit running a grab bag of phone services, was a surprise entrant in the bidding. For two months last summer, an eight-person team of analysts and executives holed up behind the blacked-out windows of a war room inside the company’s Yonge and Wellington offices. The room had been set up by an auction specialist from Washington who’d recently run AT&T’s command centre in a similar auction in the U.S., and the group spent their days looking from one giant screen of multi­coloured maps and data to another, furiously making calculations and strategizing on the fly.

In the middle of the action was Glob­alive’s 34-year-old CEO, Anthony Lacavera, who leaned on the advice of the experts he’d assembled, then analyzed the numbers to ensure their bids remained within the company’s budget. Finally, on July 21, after 331 rounds of multi­million-dollar bids, the screens went dark. Collectively, the entrants had spent $4.25 billion—almost three times what was predicted—with the majority of it coming from the big three, who each shelled out close to a billion dollars. But the most astonishing victory belonged to the dark horse, Glob­alive, and its audacious chief, who had won 30 licences covering every province except Quebec, to the tune of $442 million.

Lacavera had just laid the groundwork that would propel him from head of a little-known telco to CEO of what could become Canada’s fourth national player in the $16‑billion wireless business. But first he faces the laborious and expensive task of building a country-wide cellphone network. An entire industry—not to mention an army of disgruntled big three customers—is watching to see if he can pull it off.

MOBILE PHONES ARE SORT OF like the TTC: when they work, no one notices, but when they fail, people flip out. Dropped calls, lousy reception, extortionate roaming fees, text messages that mysteriously arrive days late—it’s an industry so fraught with frustration that an American carrier used a guy wandering around asking “Can you hear me now?” as its mascot.

Canada lags behind the rest of the developed world in both usage and quality of cellphone service. Here, only 60 per cent of consumers aged 16 to 60 own a cellphone. Eighty-four per cent of all Americans have them, and in many European countries, cellphones outnumber people. (Italy’s penetration rate is 153 per cent.) Part of the reason fewer Canadians own cellphones is that mobile customers here feel bilked. The average cellphone bill from the main brands is $60 a month; in the States it’s $50, even though Americans use almost twice as many minutes. American customers are also spared from usurious long-distance and roaming charges.